Sitta canadensis

The red-breasted nuthatch is a small songbird. The adult has blue-grey upperparts with cinnamon underparts, a white throat and face with a black stripe through the eyes, a straight grey bill and a black crown. Its call, which has been likened to a tin trumpet, is high-pitched and nasal. It breeds in coniferous forests across Canada, Alaska and the northeastern and western United States. Though often a permanent resident, it regularly irrupts further south if its food supply fails. There are records of vagrants occurring as far south as the Gulf Coast and northern Mexico. It forages on the trunks and large branches of trees, often descending head first, sometimes catching insects in flight. It eats mainly insects and seeds, especially from conifers. It excavates its nest in dead wood, often close to the ground, smearing the entrance with pitch.

Sitta canadensis

Becky Matsubara from El Sobrante, California · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
red-breasted nuthatchPBDB
Sits inside
SittaPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Sittidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Sittidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Sittidae
Mass
1.15 gWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 118 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 4 of 4 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 4 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

4 occurrences of Sitta canadensis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

4 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Sitta canadensis and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Sitta canadensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

311 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Sitta canadensis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

4 references

Each of the 4 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Sitta canadensis

Credit
Becky Matsubara from El Sobrante, California
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

CT scan

Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Sitta canadensis · BRUCE:2025.12.366:BRUCE2025_12_366

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itSitta through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1766